What can a marketing guy do for a start-up when the product is not ready yet?

I am planning to start a startup with one of my friend but our product is not ready yet. I want to know what can a marketing guy do in that case? like market research, deciding the customer/client strategy, strategy for approaching VC etc.? Any pointers in this regard will be helpful.

Just to clarify – I am gonna assume you are a Marketing person and not a Sales person. As a Marketing person, you need to have the corporate strategy, product strategy and branding done before the sales person is even hired! As soon as the Sales person comes on board, he can just take ur go to market strategy, use the demo product and start working the market.

If I were to list a few things (in chronological order):
1. Vision and mission statement
2. Branding – create logo, design templates, taglines, colour swatch
3. Implementation of branding – create website, sales collateral, brochures, company signboards, demo products, etc.
4. Marketing strategy – Create an overall go to market strategy including pricing and product feature/benefits listing.
5. Promotions strategy – Create the list of external/internal communications activities that you need to take up

By the time you have done all this, I sure hope the product is ready!

- Marketing – Jenny Craig, Oprah’s Network, Celebrity Endorsements and Brand Affinity’s Ryan Steelberg

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